Characterizing surrogates to develop an additive manufacturing process for U3Si2 nuclear fuel

JOURNAL OF NUCLEAR MATERIALS

卷:518

Article

Rosales, Jhonathan¹  van Rooyen, Isabella J.¹  Parga, Clemente J.¹ 

[1] Idaho Natl Lab, Fuel Design & Dev Dept, POB 1625, Idaho Falls, ID 83415 USA

关键词: Additive manufacturing;    U3Si2;    Accident tolerant fuel;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jnucmat.2019.02.026

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

U3Si2 is considered as an accident-tolerant nuclear fuel candidate due to its promising high uranium density along with its improved thermal properties. The current U3Si2 powder metallurgical fabrication process encompasses numerous process steps with extensive fabrication times. Thus, an additive manufacturing process to fabricate U3Si2 is currently under development to ultimately produce U3Si2 fuel at a lower cost, in a timely and commercially-reliable manner. The current research work seeks to characterize U3Si2 surrogate materials fabricated by a laser synthesis. The characterization results provided novel microstructural data that aided in the early development stages of an additive manufacturing process. For this study, cerium, zirconium, and hafnium, were selected as surrogates based on their thermodynamic properties and crystal structure. The laser-synthesized samples were characterized by means of scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) along with X-ray diffraction (XRD), where the different phases of formation, morphology, and microstructural features have been analyzed. Laser synthesis showed suitability for alloying Zr-Si and HfSi to ultimately form silicide compounds (Zr3Si2 and Hf3Si2). (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

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